A study commissioned by The Internet Advertising Bureau and completed by Internet market research firm Nielsen Online has demonstrated the strength of brand building online.
The study measured the impact on Kellogg’s Sultana Bran by tracking the responses of two separate groups, one that had been targeted using Kellogg’s full marketing force including it’s online ads and the other the same but without online ads.
The results will be good news for online advertising agencies as they highlighted favorable sentiment, propensity to purchase, a boosted brand recall and a higher willingness to recommend the product. The study has defintely taken steps towards disproving marketers who believe the internet is useless to brands looking to expand and enhance their brand image.
The next step for the Internet Advertising Bureau is to conduct further studies to learn which types of advertising seem to reap the most benefits. The bureau’s chairman, Paul Fisher, quoted in the SMH says “It should make TV people sit up and think about how they can get the maximum impact for their clients.”
An article in the Economist published today also highlighted the stability and potential growth of online advertising in 2009. The article highlights the fact that the web has changed greatly over the last few years particularly from an advertising standpoint. Nowadays, search engine advertising and interactive rich media ads play a far larger role than in earlier on in the decade – accounting for over 70% of ads online. Thanks to this, tracking performance is far easier than it once was and in doing so, makes ads online a much more concrete investment.
This week, Market-research firm eMarketer predicted that online-advertising spending in the US will increase by 8.9% in 2009, search advertising alone will grow by 14.9% and rich-media ads by 7.5%.
So maybe not such a bad year ahead for online advertising after all…?
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